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The importance of understanding why the Co<sup>2+</sup>-binding ability of albumin is reduced in ischemia
No full textExtracting blood, flies, and ideas:David and Mary Bruce, vernacular experts, and <i>unakane </i>in rural Zululand c. 1880s-1900s
No full textIn the 1890s, one of the most important scientific investigations in the early history of tropical medicine took place in rural Zululand, Colony of Natal. Since 1891, Zulu farmers’ cattle had been plagued by a deadly disease called unakane (livestock trypanosomiasis). Its cause was a subject of controversy: some blamed “big game”; others pointed at the tsetse fly, vegetation, or malaria. In 1894, the colonial government commissioned David Bruce, a Scottish-Australian surgeon-major who worked closely with his wife, Mary Bruce, to investigate. This chapter argues that the rural environment in which David Bruce was immersed was essential to his work: Zulu and settler farmers provided epidemiological theories, experimental animals, and manual labor. However, despite making major strides in the bacteriology of unakane, from which Bruce built an illustrious scientific career, his work offered almost no relief for the region, while the scientific contributions provided by local farmers were racialized and eventually forgotten
Multimodal latent emotion recognition from micro-expression and physiological signal
No full textThis paper aims at the benefits of incorporating multimodal data for improving latent emotion recognition accuracy, focusing on micro-expression (ME) and physiological signals (PS). In particular, we propose a novel multimodal learning framework that combines ME and PS information. This framework includes a novel 1D separable and mixable depthwise inception CNN, tailored to extract informative features from diverse physiological signals effectively. Additionally, we develop a standardised normal distribution weighted feature fusion methodology, which facilitates the reconstruction of feature maps from different frames within micro-expression videos. To achieve comprehensive multimodal learning, we introduce guided attention modules that assist recognising latent emotions from micro-expressions (including colour and depth information) and physiological signals. Our empirical results show that the proposed approach outperforms the benchmark method, with the weighted fusion method and guided attention modules both contributing to enhanced performance.</p
Towards understanding financial decisions in informal microbusinesses:evidence from a developing country
No full textThrough an integrative perspective, we extend the literature on capital structure of informal microbusinesses. Our approach considers the financing decision and the various financial decisions and their impact on cash generation for personal purposes. A dataset of 892 Colombian informal microbusinesses were explored to identify various business configurations using Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Hierarchical Clustering Method. Through a logistic regression, we regressed the probability of early cash generation for personal purposes on business configurations and initial financing. Four microbusiness configurations emerged: Typical informal, owner-oriented, over-indebted, and informal lenders. Results show that informal microbusinesses are distinctive in terms of their financial decisions. Initial financing provided by formal lenders and payday lenders delay early cash generation. The contrary occurs when initial financing is provided by private informal lenders and to typical informal microbusinesses. Results indicate that different configurations require customized initiatives rather than a “one-size fits all” approach for informal microbusinesses
Artwork protection against unauthorized neural style transfer and aesthetic color distance metric
No full textNeural style transfer (NST) generates new images by combining the style of one image with the content of another. However, unauthorized NST can exploit artwork, raising concerns about artists’ rights and motivating the development of proactive protection methods. We propose Locally Adaptive Adversarial Color Attack (LAACA), enabling artists to conveniently protect their work from unauthorized NST by pre-processing the artwork image before public release, providing content-independent protection regardless of which content image it may later be combined with. LAACA introduces adaptive perturbations that significantly degrade NST quality while maintaining the visual integrity of the original image. We also develope LAACAv2, which resists the current SOTA adversarial perturbation removal method — SDEdit-based adversarial purification. Additionally, we introduce the Aesthetic Color Distance Metric (ACDM) to better evaluate color-sensitive tasks like NST. Extensive experiments across various NST techniques demonstrate our methods outperform baselines in structural similarity, color preservation, and perceptual quality. User studies with both general users and art experts confirm the practical applicability of our approach, addressing the social trust crisis in the art community while advancing adversarial machine learning at the intersection of art, technology, and intellectual property rights.</p
Review of <i>Achemenet. Vingt ans après. Études offertes à Pierre Briant à l’occasion des vingt ans du Programme Achemenet</i>, edited by Damien Agut-Labordère, Rémy Boucharlat, Francis Joannès, Amélie Kuhrt, and Matthew W. Stolper. Persika, 21. Leuven: Peeters, 2021.
No full textGiovanni Dario's scripted legacies:textual self-presentation in Renaissance Venice
No full textGrowing critical interest in the Cretan-Venetian ducal secretary, polyglot diplomat, confraternity warden and palace builder Giovanni Dario has thrown important light on his biography and career, especially on his outstanding diplomatic work in successive spells brokering peace between Venice and the courts of Mehmet II and Beyazid II. The best known of his surviving writings, his 22 diplomatic letters (1484-1485) from Ottoman Turkey, are referred to, and occasionally excavated, by historians of Venice and the Levant. Dario’s texts are striking for their high degree of self awareness, with consistent foregrounding of a curated image which has no parallel among Venetian public servants of the Quattrocento. They have never been considered together in this performative light, and the precise nature of the language and lettering they deploy has been overlooked. The present essay is the first attempt at rectifying this situation. My guiding contention is that Dario’s letters, wills and lapidary inscription were crafted, in both message and medium, to project a carefully controlled legacy persona to their respective audiences: the political elite of the Serenissima; executors and beneficiaries; Venice and posterity. All evidence for this from Dario’s written inheritance has been transcribed anew in the study. Particular scrutiny is reserved for three representative primary sources: the dispatch of December 6th 1484 from Adrianople, the will of 1492 and the Ca’ Dario epigraph from the late 1480s. These are offered in philological first editions, with translations, illustrations and contextual analysis
Dealing with jokers in the pack:social enterprise and the State in Scotland, 1965-1999
No full textThis paper analyses the evolution of social enterprise in Scotland between 1965 and 1999. Using historical institutionalism and strategic action fields, we demonstrate the role of the State in institutionalising social entrepreneurship as an organisational field at the regional and national levels. This shows how social enterprise emerged as a co-created endeavour between grassroots initiatives and State support. In doing so, we demonstrate how the evolving ideology of the State facilitated social enterprise to address the economic and social needs of peripheral and deindustrialised regions. We adopt a narrative analysis to show how these historical foundations have shaped the contemporary organisational field
Behavioural reactions of harbour porpoises (<i>Phocoena phocoena</i>) to startle-eliciting stimuli:movement responses and practical applications
No full textAcoustic deterrent devices are frequently used as a mitigation method to exclude harbour porpoises Phocoena phocoena from areas of potential harm, such as wind farm construction sites. However, there is increasing evidence that the devices themselves have the capacity to cause hearing damage. Here, we investigated the response of harbour porpoises to a 15 min sequence of 200 ms sounds (peak frequency 10.5 kHz, range 5.5 to 20.5 kHz, 27 sounds total) which elicit the acoustic startle reflex. We used a duty cycle (0.6%) and sound exposure level that was significantly lower than in conventional acoustic deterrent devices. Harbour porpoises were exposed to startle sounds from a small vessel and groups were visually tracked during 13 sound exposure sequences and 11 no-sound control trials. Porpoises showed a significant avoidance reaction during exposure travelling to a mean distance of 1.78 km (maximum 3.21 km). In all cases, they left the area within 1 km of the sound source in the first 15 min after the start of the startle sequence. No avoidance was exhibited during control trials. Results are consistent with the startle reflex mediating this behaviour at low response thresholds. Our method can be used for mitigating collision risk and the risk of hearing damage from renewable energy installations, their construction and the deterrence device itself